The Cookout-Cook-in!

This past Saturday was a lousy day in some aspects -mainly weather related!

Mandy had planned to have a Cookout on Saturday evening for the family to continue in our celebrating Kurt's 5th birthday but old Mother Nature had a finger in the pie and decided to deluge us with rain, rain and yes, some more rain! Some of it in the form of really heavy downpours too!

But, not to be deterred, Ken fired up the grill and in between showers -when that was possible -and even with the rain pelting him at times -he managed to grill the burgers and hot dogs for our Saturday evening get-together.

We were a bit on the overloaded side of the carbohydrates aspect to our evening meal with a big container of pasta salad Mandy fixed and an almost as large a container of macaroni and cheese that Gram made -mainly so the birthday boy and his sister had something to eat besides a hot dog!

In addition to that, of course, there was the chocolate cake with chocolate icing on it that Mandy had brought home for Kurtis -right up his alley, ya know, considering he dearly loves chocolate of most any type concoction. And Gram made a special dessert too from a recipe she found on the Recipe.com site called "Better Than Robert Redford Dessert."

I'm sorry to say that no one present thought the dessert was quite THAT good as to be better than Robert Redford although daughter Carrie along with Pastor Carrie agreed that it was very good -just not better than, ya see.

In trying to get a consensus of opinions on the dessert, we discovered something else in the process. Seems Kurt and Maya's big sister, Katie, had no clue as to who Robert Redford is! And as much of a shock as that bit of news was to me, at least, we also learned she had never heard of Paul Newman either! Amazing, isn't it? How on earth anyone could reach the grand old age of 19 years and not ever have heard or seen or be able to recognize either Robert Redford or Paul Newman is totally beyond my comprehension.

So, I had to use the good old computer and Google to come to the rescue so I could show her pictures as well as a little biographic information on both these gorgeous actors so she could at least recognize them in the future then should she see pictures of them or view a movie or two (or hopefully even more) with them in starring roles and then be able to identify them as such. Once she saw the photos, she had very little in the way of comments about Mr. Redford but did mention that that Newman guy looked pretty nice. All that while Gram was sitting here totally engrossed and drooling massively over the pictures on the monitor of Paul Newman. I attribute my fondness for Paul Newman to the fact that I simply can't resist ice blue eyes like his! Gotta stop writing about Paul Newman now or I'll get way too excited just thinking about what a fantastic actor he was as well as what a scrumpdelicious hunk of man he was as well!!!

But anyway, we had quite a fun time celebrating Kurt's birthday for the third time this past week, for sure and he got lots and lots of really neat and cool toys as well -for the third time this week.

Now -back to the dessert though. Reading others blog posts on my reader this morning, I learned that my blogger buddy, Terri, had her daughter and a friend use a recipe I had either sent her via e-mail or maybe I had posted it here on my blog for Pistachio Cupcakes and apparently they were as big a hit at her house as they were here at my place. So I thought well, I'll have to post the recipe now here for the Better Than Robert Redford Dessert so anyone interested can take a shot at fixing it and decide for themselves as to how good they think this piece is too then!

I do have a picture of the finished product that I took -which of course doesn't really show how yummy it really is but at least gives a little idea about it.


The recipe is actually quite easy to make although certain aspects can initially be a tad tricky to get things to come together nicely.

And for those who want to try this masterpiece, here then is the recipe for "Better Than Robert Redford Dessert!"


Ingredients:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened
1 cup confectioner's sugar
1 container (8 ounces) frozen whipped topping, thawed
4 cups milk
2 boxes (3.4 oz each) instant vanilla pudding
2 boxes (3.4 oz each) instant chocolate pudding
chopped nuts, chocolate curls

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Coat 13x9x2 inch baking dish with nonstick coating spray.
2. In medium-size bowl, mix flour, walnuts and melted butter. Pat into prepared dish. Bake at 350 degrees F. for 15 minutes and cool.
3. In a bowl, beat cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Fold in half of the whipped topping. Spread over cooled crust.
4. Prepare vanilla pudding using 2 cups of the milk. Spread over cream cheese layer. Prepare chocolate pudding with remaining 2 cups of milk and spread this over the vanilla pudding layer. Spread remaining whipped topping over pudding layers. Refrigerate at least 2 hours or overnight. Sprinkle with nuts and chocolate curls. Cut into squares.

See! Easy peasy, huh?

And when I typed this up here now I see that when I made the dessert I made an error due I suppose to my failing eyesight that even new glasses don't help if you don't read a recipe correctly. I only used 1 package of each flavor of pudding mix when I fixed this. It turned out good enough but perhaps it was that mistake that caused people to think it wasn't quite better than Robert Redford after all. But at least it was a little more than just passable so I'm not gonna lose any sleep over that!

So now, if the recipe appeals to you, take your pick if you want to use 1 package of each pudding mix or the two packages as the recipe calls for. Either way, it works out okay -just that the 1 package of each creates a slimmer layer.

No more birthday celebrations now for about 2-3 more weeks when it will be Elizabeth's birthday (Clate's girlfriend) and we'll have to figure out what to do for that event then too.

In the meantime, I have to make a quick trip up the road to the home of my friend, Nila, who is also our local tax collector here too so I can get a form to fill out to file my local income tax as well as pay my "per capita" tax that I owe too. If I don't return to blogging in a reasonable time span, well I suppose you can come find me at the Debtor's Prison for Delinquent Tax Payers -if there is such a thing these days. (Actually I'm not late on my income taxes but I am late on the Personal Per Capita thingy cause I keep forgetting about that one!)

Happy Income Tax Day to one and all. Maybe making the Robert Redford Dessert would be a good way to appease the pain of paying taxes.

Ya think?